gerbal
Ordering Use, Import, Alias, Require?
Is there a recommended ordering of require, use, import, and alias? Does the style guide have anything to say about the preferred ordering of special forms?
Marked As Solved
moxley
Note that the order of some items have been changed:
@moduledoc@behaviouruseimportrequirealias@module_attributedefstruct@type@callback@macrocallback@optional_callbacks-
defmacro,defmodule,defguard,def, etc.
Also Liked
gerbal
Nevermind, the styleguide is pretty explicit about this: GitHub - christopheradams/elixir_style_guide: A community driven style guide for Elixir
List module attributes and directives in the following order:
- @moduledoc
- @behaviour
- use
- import
- alias
- require
- defstruct
- @type
- @module_attribute
- @callback
- @macrocallback
- @optional_callbacks
Add a blank line between each grouping, and sort the terms (like module names) alphabetically.
LostKobrakai
It won‘t ever do that. One premise of the core formatter is that it won‘t change the underlying AST by applying formatting. That ensures that formatting will never introduce a change in behavior of the code and therefore won‘t introduce unintended bugs. Reordering expressions means changing the AST however.
lud
I wonder if anyone is using the following:
aliasimportrequireuse
So you can just sort the whole thing alphabetically, without empty lines.
An only after that module attributes, including @moduledoc, as in the doc I found quite often useful to be able to reuse another attribute, or even call a remote function.
NobbZ
At my place we do not have a strict order, as long as they are grouped accordingly.
Though due to the way our set up is structured, we often have calls to use/2 in a certain kind of modules that set up “dependencies” to other modules of the same kind input and output events. Those uses were really ugly to write with the regular “use first” rule, and we eventually got into the habbit to generally have aliases first, uses second. require just follows that. And we generally avoid import.
sodapopcan
Depending on what they are and the “type” of module, I put them close to where they are first used. If there is a single errant function that needs a macro, I require or import it right in that function.







